8 NATIONAL REPUBLICAN SENATORIAL COMMITTEE v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N KAGAN, J., dissenting current base limits, an individual donor can give Smith’s campaign at most $7,000 for the primary and general elections. See supra, at 4. But Smith can potentially get much more out of that donor by raising money alongside his party—meaning both its national and state committees. To do so, he forms what is known as a “joint fundraising committee”—named, let’s say, the John Smith Victory Fund— consisting of his own campaign committee, the national party committee (the RNC or DNC), and party committees from each of the 50 States (or close to it). Under the base limits applying to parties, a national committee can accept $44,300 from an individual donor, and a state committee can accept $10,000. See FEC, Contribution Limits for 2025–2026. The great advantage of a joint fundraising committee is that it can collect contributions on behalf of all 52 of its component committees via a single payment: The donor writes one check to the John Smith Victory Fund for the total amount he can contribute to all the committees. The numbers add up. Fifty times $10,000 (the state committee cap) is $500,000. And when the permitted contributions to the national committee ($44,300) and Smith’s own campaign committee ($7,000) are added in, a single donor can cut a check to the John Smith Victory Fund for over $550,000 ($551,300, to be precise). The lion’s share of that money typically gets pooled within short order in the national party committee’s coffers. It takes a couple of steps. First, the John Smith Victory Fund parcels the money out to its member committees, in accordance with the contribution limits. That means the national party gets $44,300, and the state parties each get $10,000. But then most state parties quickly transfer their $10,000 payment to the national party, sometimes the same —————— quo with less money. So the potential for corruption is, generally speaking, the same.